


Follow My Lead

by ladyflowdi



Category: NCIS
Genre: Angst, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-13
Updated: 2010-05-13
Packaged: 2017-12-12 02:26:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/806088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyflowdi/pseuds/ladyflowdi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It begins like this: Tony, being handsome, normal, everyday Tony, in his favorite dove-gray suit and the Armani tie Tim bought him for Christmas, with his devil-may-care smile that lights up the room as a bonus accessory, says, “Want to go dancing tonight?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Follow My Lead

**Author's Note:**

> Posting this so I can have everything on AO3 -- giving you major side-eye, LJ, just so we're clear.

It begins like this: Tony, being handsome, normal, everyday Tony, in his favorite dove-gray suit and the Armani tie Tim bought him for Christmas, with his devil-may-care smile that lights up the room as a bonus accessory, says, “Want to go dancing tonight?”

It’s too early in the damn morning; far too early, and Tim is standing in the kitchen in his underwear, barely awake. He says “Mehmm?” and Tony grins, slouches against the counter top, far too awake for this far too early hour. He’s holding a traveler’s mug of coffee he never brings into the office, and Tim’s head is swimming because he’s sure Tony just said—

“Dancing. The act of shaking ones business in public. It’s Friday, I figured we can celebrate catching the bad guys for once.” Tony grins, but it isn’t one of the eight wicked, Cheshire grins Tim had long ago learned to keep track of – it’s real, far too real at this far too early hour and wow Tim needs about four more hours of sleep to process this insanity.

“Dancing.”

“Yes McTravolta. Dancing.” The smile is wavering a little, and Tim hates that, _hates_ because it’s too five thirty and Tony is bringing the emotions on and the beginnings of a headache are pounding between Tim’s eyes. Tony shifts up out of his slouch, almost seems to shift _away_ , and says, “Think about it. Or don’t,” and Tim’s hurt him, he knows he has, but for the life of him he can’t seem to make his mouth move.

Tony says, “See you at the office,” and brushes a kiss over Tim’s temple before he can blink, and leaves Tim in his empty apartment smelling the cologne Tony likes to wear because it makes Tim’s heart trip around in his chest.

 

They don’t go dancing – in fact, Tony doesn’t bring it up again for the rest of the day, rest of the _weekend_ , and for a while Tim thinks maybe he dreamed it because – well, dancing, _gay dancing_ , and dammit Tim isn’t a homophobe (be kind of self-defeating, wouldn’t it) but he just _can’t._

They’re in Tony’s bed two weeks later, sweaty and hot and gasping, Tony’s shoulder damp under his cheek and those long, cool fingers in his hair, when Tony murmurs, “We could take classes, if you’re embarrassed.”

Tim lifts his head up, shifts his hips a little and watches Tony’s eyes go big and startled, listens to the tick of his throat as he swallows. “You think I need to take classes?”

Amusement, then, and lots of it, and Tony moves his leg up a little, reaches down where Tim’s gone soft inside him and traces the hot, wet line of the condom. Rolls it back up a little, from where its rolled down. “Well, I could get you some Trojans and some bananas, if you want.”

Tim’s eyes narrow. “Bananas.”

“Cucumbers? Zucchinis? Don’t make me exaggerate, Tim, it’s just going to hurt your feelings,” but the last part is said on a the tail end of an explosion of laughter as Tim does his best to tickle him into submission, which leads to less in the way of tickling and more in the way of moaning.

It’s only later, when they’re in the shower and Tim’s stroking his fingertip over the laugh lines fanning from Tony’s eyes, that he realizes Tony wasn’t talking about sex.

 

They catch a case a month or so after that – big one, the biggest, and the body count goes into to the double digits before they find the guy, an officer with a penchant for making a buck on buying and selling girls from China to bad men with worse appetites. Gibbs is uncharacteristically nice afterward, takes them off weekend rotation and tells them not to show up before noon on Monday, which is welcome considering they’d worked the case for two straight weeks.

They barely make it into Tony’s place before they’re up against the door and already fucking – wet and hot, Tony’s big hand around his cock. Tony drops to his knees and makes Tim see God and all the holy saints, makes him remember prayers he hasn’t said since primary school, makes him knot his fingers in Tony’s hair and lose control like only Tony has ever gotten him to do. He thrusts and watches the red bow of Tony’s lips stretch to take him, watches Tony’s eyes water, watches a single line of saliva slide down from the corner of his mouth, catching in the stubble along his jaw line.

Later, Tim wakes up alone, dust dancing in the morning sun shining over his bedroom. He smells something frying, bacon maybe, and when he comes out of his bedroom there’s Tony in Tim’s old, barely functional kitchen, frying bacon and eggs and humming along with Frank on Tim’s kitschy, old timey radio, _I’ve Got You Under My Skin_. For an instant Tony is out of an old movie, all golden skin meeting the black of his trousers, bare feet and towel over his shoulder, humming and swaying his hips as he cooks, and Tim’s heart can’t take the joy that sweeps him over and swallows him up. 

He slips in close, presses against the miles of Tony’s beautiful, bare back, slides his hands around to that little belly Tony’s self conscious of, down over the unbuttoned edge of his pants. Tony doesn’t look at him, though Tim sees the crook of his brow, the little smile that tugs up on his lips. 

He turns, catches Tim’s hand, and it’s clear he wants to dance, wants Tim to slide into the circle of his arms where he thinks Tim belongs, and Tim hesitates, and hesitates, and the smile fades on Tony’s face to be replaced with something bright and false. “Breakfast is almost ready,” he says, and squeezes Tim’s fingers before letting go. “Get ready, McSleepy, lots to do today.”

“Tony—”

But Tony’s minding the bacon, and Tim knows he isn’t going to turn around again.

 

It isn’t that Tim doesn’t want to talk to Tony about it, except the part where he really, really doesn’t want to talk to Tony about it, if only because he’ll get that big fake smile on his face that makes Tim want to punch himself in the nose. What’s more, he knows he’s being a class-A idiot, the kind of idiot who doesn’t know how good he has it, except he does know, he _does_ , just like he knows that Tony won’t drop it because it means something to him. 

Tim doesn’t get his own hang-up. It’s stupid on a level he didn’t think himself capable of, and wishes, for an instant, that he could tell Gibbs, if only because he thinks the head-slap will make him feel better.

He tells Abby, instead.

“Say that you have this friend.”

“Oh, the best conversations begin with ‘say you have this friend,” Abby says, grinning over the remains of a dead corporal’s acid-burnt uniform. Tim squints at her, because she’s going through a stage where she’s trying new things, and today it’s neon orange. “Continue.”

“Say that this friend has a significant other. And said significant other wants him to do something he doesn’t want to do.”

“I find it very interesting that you used ‘significant other’ instead of a gender pronoun, thus leading me to the very scientific conclusion that you don’t want me to know who this ‘friend’ is dating. Why is that, Timmy?” and Tim knows he’s made a big mistake, _huge_ , because Abby’ll get it out of him one way or another, and if that happens Tony may very well kill him.

Abby looks like a cat who got the cream, big eyes beseeching him to lay off the secrets already, and Tim says, loudly, “Say that this friend’s significant other is being really sweet and understanding about this thing my friend doesn’t want to do, and that’s making my friend feel like crap.”

“Unless it’s illegal, you should probably get your head out of your ass before she tells you to take a hike,” Gibbs says behind them, and then – 

“Ow! I mean, thank you, Boss.”

And, not so weirdly, Tim does feel a little better.

 

Then, Tony gets shot.

They’re on a week-long case that’s taken them to Amish country, and Tony, because he’s an idiot like that, saves Tim’s life by shoving him out of the way of a Marine’s pissed off ex-father-in-law.

In the ensuing gunfight no one even realizes Tony’s been shot, least of all Tony, until Gibbs and Ziva have the perp on the ground and Tony says, “Huh.”

That’s when Tim turns around, and when his heart climbs up into his throat, because Tony’s looking down at his belly and there’s a spreading streak of red coming through the white cotton of his shirt. Tim grabs him, snags elbow and waist as Tony’s knees give out and shouts, “Gibbs!” and adds, “What the _hell_ , Tony. You’re not good looking enough to be Harrison Ford.”

“Nobody is good looking enough to be Harrison F-Ford, except Harrison Ford, and so I… I take that as a compliment,” Tony says, face gone white as ash, and adds, “Fuck, this hurts.”

Amish country is called Amish country for a reason; their car is shot to hell, the only town is eleven miles away, and the only way to get help is for Gibbs to work some of those old-school Marine skills. He says he can get to the town in under an hour on horseback to bring back help, and Tim believes him, if only because it’s _Gibbs_ and the man is made of magic and war paint. 

It’s the longest hour of Tim’s life, sitting in Mrs. Crazy Ex-Father-In-Law’s kitchen, where she’s weeping and Ziva is quietly speaking to her and Tony is spread out on her kitchen table looking a little bit like death. Tim loses whatever semblance of We Should Probably Keep This Secret he had, mouth next to Tony’s ear and whispering stupid shit, _stupid_. He leaves his hand on the bandage over the bleeding hole in Tony’s belly, and Tony gasps and gasps and gasps, and fists his fingers in Tim’s shirt as tears streak down from the corners of his eyes.

By the end, by the time he hears the ambulance, Tony is in shock, white as a ghost and listless under Tim’s jacket. Tim can’t let go, can’t take his fingers off of Tony’s pulse until Gibbs says behind him, uncharacteristically gentle, “We’ve got him Tim, it’s alright,” and even then he feels like screaming when they lift Tony away from him.

It’s only later, later after the surgery and the blood transfusions and the phone calls, after Abby has sobbed all over everyone and Ducky has laid the smack down on thoughtless doctors _who wouldn’t tell them anything_ , and everyone has finally gone home, that Tim sees Tony. He’s pale, Tony -- pale and silent and covered in wires and tubes. Tim listens to the respirator breathe for him, and the machines beep, and squeezes the bed railing so hard his fingers turn white, and doesn’t give one shit that Gibbs is standing in the doorway, watching.

 

He doesn’t see Tony again for three weeks after that. Well, not that he doesn’t see Tony every day, because he does – he goes to the hospital after work, then later to Tony’s place where he’s being pampered to a horrifying degree by Abby, but through some twist of fate they’re never alone and Tim doesn’t try to rectify the situation. 

The problem is that they’re too close -- joined at the hip, really -- on the job and off. Tim hadn’t realized how much until there wasn’t someone there to mock him for his bad jokes, to call him a geek, to finish his sentences. The intimacy only got deeper when they started sleeping together, almost as if it’d been a natural progression of things, and now Tim can’t _sleep_ because when he turns around in bed and doesn’t run into one of Tony’s many flailed limbs something in him splinters and cracks just that little bit more. 

That Tim pulls his head out of his ass is a pure fluke on his part, or maybe a part of his hind brain taking the wheel and deciding for him that it’s time to stop being a shit head. 

It happens like this: he has a particularly awful day at work. Fornell comes by one morning to ask for their help on a case, and Gibbs can’t say no because he owes the guy a favor.

What happens is that someone is a sick fuck, and said sick fuck plants a bomb in the body of a dead marine, and the last thing Tim wanted on a Thursday was to get a dead and decayed body blown up at him. The universe doesn’t much care what he wants, that much is evident, because they all end up in the decomp showers washing bits of tissue out of their hair.

He calls Tony, because he always calls Tony, and listens to him laugh over the phone, _Two years ago you would have fainted, McProbie,_ and grins until Gibbs says, “Tell Tony to take his medicine before noon, and get off the damn phone,” and Tim gets off the phone before Gibbs kills him.

Tony is well enough that when Tim comes by that night in his extra set of work clothes (cinched up at the waist and too big in the arms, he’s proud to say), carrying a plastic bag of evidence-free clothes, Tony just grins at him, gets his keys.

The laundromat is called Claire’s Wash’N’Scrub, and the owner, Claire’s daughter Roxanne, could probably kill Tim with her pinkie toe and a glare. It’s late, and there’s no one there, not even Roxanne. The lights are flickering a little overhead, and the sharp, bitter smell of bleach is still clinging to the corners of the room.

He and Tony were coming here long before there was a him-and-Tony, long enough that Tim knows which washers turn the best, which dryers dry the fastest. Still, there’s enough time to sit down, to take a load off and listen to the hum of machines and look at Tony, pale and washed out under the ugly lights but wholly there, wholly himself.

Tim feels a little awkward and unsure, and as emotionally constipated as he’s ever been in his life. It isn’t a feeling he likes much, so after a minute he says, “Did you take your medicine?”

“Yes, mother,” Tony says, grins, slouches in his seat. He’s trying for an easy sprawl and misses by a mile. “Tell me about the case.”

Tim does, because Tony’s still got the rest of the week for sick leave and he’s obviously going bonkers, regardless of all the first person shooters Tim’s been uploading to Tony’s X-Box the past two weeks. “Corporal with a vendetta.”

“Don’t they all have vendettas?”

“This one involved an ex-wife.”

“Hah! It’s always the wife. Women are beautiful creatures, McTim, until they’re scorned.”

Tim glances over, grins. “Still pretty hot when they’re scorned.”

Tony whistles under his breath. “She was smokin’.”

“Solid nine-point-five.”

“Specs.”

Tim leans back in his chair, kicks his feet out a little. His sneakers are scuffed at the toe, old and weather-beaten and his favorite to go for coffee on Saturdays. “Thirty nine, body of a twenty five year old. Long glossy hair, big almond eyes.”

“Glasses?”

“Horn-rims.”

Tony groans and Tim can’t help himself – he laughs. “Since when are glasses your kryptonite?”

“Since they come on the tiny little bodies of tiny little women with gorgeous eyes.”

Tim rubs the toe of one shoe over the other. “I used to wear glasses as a kid.”

“Really?”

“As a teenager. I didn’t even need them.”

“Then why wear them?”

“Because all my friends did.”

Tony laughs, beautiful and big, and Tim thinks about Saturday mornings in the little coffee shop around the corner from his place, where they always had coffee, and Tony would laugh and sparkle and sometimes, when he sat with his back to the window, the morning sun would catch the gray in his hair and Tim’s heart would thud in his heart so hard he had to pinch himself in the leg. Tony’s smile always went soft at the edges, and he’d press the side of his sneaker against Tim’s, and Tim would think about the way Tony always smelled a little bit like shampoo behind his left ear where he always forgot to rinse, and the way he got goose-bumps when Tim touched him just right. 

Tony is so beautiful, even under these awful lights, with his arms crossed and a hole in the corner edge of his t-shirt, and Tim thinks about how this had almost been taken from him, how Tony’s blood had felt on his hands, hot and thick, how Tony had looked at him with so much pain and so much regret and so much love.

How he’s looking at him now.

Overhead, Journey comes on the classic rock station, and Tim laughs because dear God, this had been at his junior prom. He stands, and ignoring the funny look Tony gave him, offers him his hand.

“What?”

“Come on.” Tim motions him up.

“Your clothes aren’t dry yet,” Tony says, but takes his hand and stands, and Tim ignores how much help Tony needs because if he thinks about it something in him is going to break again and now is not the time for that.

He pulls Tony careful and close, and Tony freezes when it becomes clear just what Tim intends, but only for a moment. Slowly, slowly, he melts right there where he stands, and Tim squeezes Tony’s fingers and puts their entwined hands on his chest. “You’ve been trying to get me to do this for weeks now,” he murmurers into Tony’s hair. “Haven’t told me why.”

Tony shrugs without looking at him, and for once has nothing to say. He feels funny against Tim, big and bulky and whiskery, and not funny at all. Close to perfect, actually.

It isn’t a tango, or a waltz, or even what he did at his junior prom, hands awkwardly on his date’s waist, fingers stiff and sweat dampening his collar. What they’re doing can’t even be called dancing, but a slow, comfortable sway, hugging with movement maybe, and as gay as Tim has ever been in public. He can’t believe how stupid he’s been, when Tony has let Tim in so deep, can’t believe that it ever came to this, dancing under flickering florescent lights in a laundromat in the middle of the night.

Tim strokes his fingers soft along the small of Tony’s back, murmurs into Tony’s hair, “Sorry.”

Tony huffs laughter into Tim’s ear, slides his hand up to Tim’s shoulder. “For being a guy?”

“You’re a guy.”

“Well,” Tony turns his head, grins, and this close Tim can see the flecks of gold in Tony’s eyes, as intimate as when Tony’s thighs are trembling around Tim’s back and Tim’s so deep he’ll never get free. “Yeah.”

Dancing in a laundromat at midnight is the first gay thing Tim’s ever done in public.

Kissing Tony in a laundromat at midnight is the second.


End file.
